The cost and types of benefits and/or coverage associated with medical insurance plans are important factors in selecting certain medical insurance plans. That is, costs and benefits and/or coverage can have a major impact on the decision to purchase certain types of medical insurance plans, from basic medical insurance coverage to coverage with a host of more advanced options. In fact, in many instances consumer costs are a driving factor in selecting certain medical insurance plans.
Typically, an employer offers several medical insurance plans to their employees. These medical insurance plans come with different costs and different coverage. For example, one medical insurance plan can have a high deductible with a low premium; whereas, another medical insurance plan may have a low deductible with a high premium. These different plans can also include different co-payments and costs for different prescription drug plans. To complicate the selection process even more, the employer can offer certain benefits to their employees, ranging from health savings accounts (HSA) to premium support.
Another complicating factor to select a medical insurance plan is that an employee (or individual) can select medical insurance plans from different sources, other than the employer: a spouse's employer or a government run insurance exchange, as examples. Each of these different sources can include different types of information, located at different sources, spread among different documents, thus making it very difficult for the consumer to compare and select between the medical insurance plans. With these many factors to consider, it becomes ever more difficult for a consumer to compare and select an appropriate medical insurance plan.